Zhu Hu, the laughing stock of Ming history, has been praised worldwide and has made outstanding contributions
The ancient prince, either righteous and awe-inspiring, or indulged in pleasure, intrigued for the position of the crown prince. However, Zhu Yuanzhang's fifth son, Zhu Hu, was a clear stream, and his enthusiasm for life was all devoted to plant research, and despite his troubled life, his research results had a profound impact on later generations and even the world.
Zhu Hu, a historical figure born in 1361, his biological mother and Zhu Di are siblings. His father, Zhu Yuanzhang, attached great importance to education, and hired famous teachers to educate his son before ascending the throne.
Although Zhu Hu is not smart, he has a natural desire for knowledge and a spirit of hard work, so he has learned a lot of knowledge. In 1370, Zhu Yuanzhang decided to divide several princes into various places, and the 9-year-old Zhu Hu was named King of Wu and went to Hangzhou.
Hangzhou is a wealthy and prosperous place, and it is also an important tax revenue center of the state, which has a great impact on the overall financial situation of the imperial court, and it is close to Nanjing. He felt that establishing a vassal king here might pose some problems, so he decided to change the title of Zhu Hu to the king of Zhou and let him return to his hometown of Fengyang.
Three years later, Zhu Yuanzhang ordered Zhu Lu to go to Kaifeng to become a vassal. However, his father-in-law's exile in Yunnan also caused him trouble. Zhu Yuanzhang won the throne from the uprising, and he was very sensitive to imperial power, fearing that someone would follow his example and follow the old path of rebellion.
Although Zhu Yuanzhang was Zhu Hu's father, he still exercised strict management over his sons, including a rule prohibiting them from leaving their fiefdoms without permission.
Zhu Hu lived a very peaceful life in Kaifeng, but one day he secretly left Kaifeng and went to Fengyang, which attracted the attention of Kaifeng ** and reported it to Zhu Yuanzhang. This kind of behavior undoubtedly touched the emperor's bottom line.
Although Zhu Hu was Zhu Yuanzhang's biological son, he could not turn a blind eye to this behavior, otherwise other vassal kings would follow suit. What's worse is that as the investigation deepens, it is found that Feng Sheng, a famous general with heavy troops, is also in Fengyang, and Zhu Hu's wife happens to be Feng Sheng's daughter.
Zhu Yuanzhang had doubts in his heart, he wanted to know why Zhu Hu secretly went to see his father-in-law, was he planning a military alliance, or was he discussing how to deal with the boss, maybe even wanted to deal with himself?
This doubt made Zhu Yuanzhang very angry, and he decided to exile Zhu Hu to remote Yunnan. For Feng Sheng, Zhu Yuanzhang also began to pay attention to his actions at all times, and even wore "colored glasses".
However, Feng Sheng went against Zhu Yuanzhang's will because of many trivial things, and although he had the most credit, he was finally suspicious of Zhu Yuanzhang and died without guilt. Therefore, Zhu Hu's behavior from Kaifeng to Fengyang back then was likely to cause trouble to his father-in-law.
So, why did he go to Fengyang?
Some people say that Zhu Hu spent his youth in Kaifeng, Henan, where disasters were frequent, and he could not bear the hardships and fled his hometown to Fengyang. It is also believed that Zhu Hu had already developed a strong interest in plants and medicine at that time, and he chose there in order to obtain plant samples from Fengyang.
Of course, it is also possible that he just wants to go to Fengyang to visit his father-in-law. However, after deciding to go to Yunnan to study plants, Zhu Hu really experienced the suffering of the world. Yunnan was regarded as a "wild land" at the time, with little development, and the local people lived in extreme hardship, with rampant diseases and a lack of medical care.
Many people can only suffer in silence because of the lack of medical treatment.
Zhu Hu's love and pursuit of medicine in his heart made him feel an impulse of pity and redemption after seeing the scene in front of him. In his eyes, medicine is like a magical illusion, which can not only make people live longer, but also ** disease.
In order to benefit more people, Zhu Hu organized several good doctors in his house to compile the "Pocket Prescription". The book is small, but it is rich in content, containing medicines and medical knowledge that can alleviate or ** specific conditions, and the language is easy to understand.
The appearance of "Pocket Formula" has allowed many people in Yunnan to quickly prescribe the right medicine after being sick and get timely treatment, and they are full of gratitude to Zhu Hu and regard him as"Savior"。
However, a year later, Zhu Yuanzhang recalled Zhu Hu and gave him a lesson in person"Politics lessons"。
In 1391, Zhu was allowed to return to his fiefdom, but when he set foot on Kaifeng again, he found himself with a different perspective and experience.
His time in Yunnan allowed him to see a whole new world, and it also made him understand the weight of the words he wrote. He was determined to use his knowledge and research to save more people, not just tell them how to take medicine.
In the Ming Dynasty, where natural disasters were frequent, his efforts were even more important. Because the people's fields were destroyed, their crops were destroyed, and famines were frequent, the people even had to eat grass to satisfy their hunger.
In this case, Zhu Hu's contribution is immeasurable. He not only saved those who were plagued by disease, but also those who were struggling with famine.
Faced with the problem of poisoning and even death of people due to eating wild vegetables, Zhu Hu decided to study plants in depth, in order to solve this problem, he took a series of measures: organize scholars to conduct research, collect and consult a large number of materials, and personally go to the people to investigate related plants; At the same time, he also recruited skilled artists to draw the illustrations in the book.
Eventually, he set up an experimental botanical garden to grow the wild edible plants he had surveyed and observe them in detail at all times. Zhu Hu's scientific research spirit is worthy of our admiration, and his actions prove his concern for the people's lives and his love for science.
Father and son have a deep relationship": Zhu Yuanzhang loved his eldest son Zhu Biao so much that when considering the heir, he did not hesitate to choose Zhu Biao's son Zhu Yunwen as the imperial grandson.
Although Zhu Yunwen is still young, his vigilance against imperial power is very high, and he knows that his uncles will pose a threat to his status if they hold military power. Therefore, as soon as he ascended the throne, he took measures to reduce the feudal domain.
He thought repeatedly in the palace, and the brothers in the family passed away one by one, leaving only the fourth uncle Zhu Di, but Zhu Di had a very high reputation in the court and was strong, and it was difficult to start. He decided to weaken the power of his fifth uncle Zhu Hu first, because Zhu Hu and Zhu Di are half-brothers, so that Zhu Di will have less protection.
However, how to find a reason to weaken Zhu Hu's vassal king? Zhu Yunwen thought about it for a long time, he didn't expect that in the end, it was Zhu Hu's own son who helped him solve the problem.
One day, Zhu Hu's second son, Zhu Youjiao, reported to the imperial court that his father Zhu Hu and eldest brother Zhu Youwei tried to rebel. When Zhu Yunwen heard the news, he was surprised, but he couldn't help laughing, there was a strange news in the world that a son reported his father's rebellion.
He forcibly held back the joy in his heart, frowned, and pretended to be angry and ordered to go to Kaifeng to arrest Zhu Hu.
Zhu Hu's fate was regrettable, he was demoted to a Shuren and exiled to Menghua, Yunnan. His family events became widely known and became a laughing stock. However, in fact, Zhu Hu's second son, Zhu Youjiao, is not really "brainless", and the reason why he did this is because he is full of desire for the position of the son.
As for Zhu Hu himself, he also has his own plans. According to historical records, he once harbored a strange conspiracy. When "Saving the Famine Materia Medica" came to Menghua, Yunnan, Zhu Hu was full of emotion, this was the second time he came to Yunnan.
Why is his life so troubled, the last time he was punished by his father, this time he was punished by his nephew, and this time he was reported by the dog son. He recalled the first time he came to Yunnan, the eyes of the people who were numbed by the pain, and the desperate eyes made him unforgettable.
He smiled and let those people laugh at him as the "straw bale prince", a prince who lives with grass all day long. Those laughter could not shake his determination, and he had to stand firm on his beliefs.
At this moment, he seemed to understand that for him, plants were not only a discipline, but also a kind of spiritual sustenance. Even when life was hard, he was able to maintain the abundance of his heart.
He stayed away from the court and focused on what he loved, how could this happiness not be an achievement? He wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes, picked up the brush, and clenched the barrel of the pen firmly, as if pouring all his dissatisfaction with fate into this pen.
He wrote four big characters on the cover of the book - Saving the Famine Materia Medica......
More than 150 years later, a person opened the "Materia Medica", and he evaluated it as "detailed and evidenceable", he was Li Shizhen. He quoted the material in the book and borrowed the methods used in the book to describe plants, and finally created the Compendium of Materia Medica.
In the Qing Dynasty, wild vegetables changed from the original to satisfy people's appetite for food and clothing, and even entered the emperor's table. It is said that Yongzheng will have wild vegetables on his table every day, and his son Qianlong is also a loyal lover of wild vegetables.
The book includes 414 species of plants, of which more than 2 3 plants have not been recorded in previous herbal books. In this book, Zhu Hu abandons the traditional cumbersome research, but uses easy-to-understand language and illustrations based on direct observation.
Whether it is from the point of view of popularizing botanical knowledge or facilitating the people's search for food, the "Materia Medica" has important guiding significance.
Zhu Hu is an innovative botanist, he proposed a novel method to eliminate the toxicity of edible plants in "Materia Medica", such as steaming bean leaves and poisonous plants to remove their toxicity.
The influence of this work was not limited to China, but also spread to Japan, and had a profound impact on the development of botany in Japan. Zhu Hu's method of "planting plants in the botanical garden to observe and record" was also highly praised by the American historian of science Sutton.
He considers Zhu Hu's botanical garden to be an outstanding achievement of the Middle Ages, and the Materia Medica, which can almost be said to be the most outstanding Materia Medica, in the Middle Ages. Joseph Needham, a British expert on the history of science and technology, also believes that the work of Zhu Huan and others is an important contribution of the Chinese in humanitarianism, and they are both great pioneers and great humanitarians.
In his third year in Yunnan, Zhu Lu received news that his brother Zhu Di had captured Nanjing and replaced him as emperor. After Zhu Di ascended the throne, he immediately recalled his younger brother Zhu Hu, restored his title, and added 5,000 stone to Yulu.
On the way back to Henan, Zhu Hu said with emotion: "It seems that my brother treats me better than my son!" "Fortunately, the sky has eyes, and good people will be rewarded in the end, Zhu Hu's fate was saved by his brother Zhu Di, otherwise he may have to live in Menghua forever.
Zhu Hu's "tradition" seems to be to be suspicious, but after two exiles in Yunnan, he finally understood the importance of the imperial court. So, he offered to hand over his three guards to the imperial court, so as to live a peaceful life.
After Zhu Di's son succeeded to the throne, he increased Zhu Di's annual salary by 20,000 stones. In 1425, Zhu Hu died at the age of 64.